Longitudinal inquiry into public sentiments on environmental governance in China

How do citizens evaluate government performance in environmental governance? Existing scholarship has predominantly examined public perceptions of environmental governance through static or period-specific lenses, thus lacking a thorough longitudinal perspective. This study employs an Age-Period-Cohort framework to investigate evolving trends in local environmental governance satisfaction in China. Leveraging nine waves of nationally representative Chinese Social Survey data from 2006 to 2023, this study uses Generalized Additive Model, complemented by Age-Period-Cohort Interaction models as robustness checks. The analysis yields several key findings: First, older respondents generally report higher satisfaction with environmental governance than younger respondents. Second, period variation is the most pronounced temporal pattern, with satisfaction showing a general upward tendency despite a non-monotonic trajectory characterized by a decline to a 2013 trough followed by a marked increase. Third, evidence of cohort differentiation is less consistent, with nonlinear cohort variation evident in the primary analysis but more limited evidence of differences associated with specific cohorts in the robustness analysis. Additional analyses reveal urban–rural differences in these temporal patterns. These insights enrich the nuanced longitudinal understanding of public evaluations of government performance.